


How to Cheer Up a Sourpuss

by MrTyeDye



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, LadyNoir - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:26:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29902452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrTyeDye/pseuds/MrTyeDye
Summary: A fight with Gabriel over dinner leaves Adrien in a dour mood, which starts to bleed into his hero work as Cat Noir. Fortunately, Ladybug has just the antidote.
Kudos: 23





	How to Cheer Up a Sourpuss

Adrien had grown used to eating supper alone. At 6:00 most evenings, Nathalie would come in, hand him his dinner and leave, only returning to collect his dishes. Sometimes he'd ask if his father was planning on joining him, and he'd feel a sting of sadness when Nathalie inevitably told him "no".

On the rare occasions that his father _did_ join him, it wasn't much better. On those occasions, Gabriel acted as he always did - cold, aloof, unfeeling. Adrien hardly ever got a "how are you?" or a "how was your day?" out of him. He even would have settled for a simple smile from his old man, but this, too, seemed to be too much to ask of him.

Tonight was one such night. Adrien and Gabriel sat across from each other in the luxurious dining room, eating their filet mignon in silence. Only the sound of silverware clinking against the dishes could be heard throughout the spacious room. It wasn't until about three minutes in that Gabriel deigned to speak.

"Your piano playing has gotten sloppy," he said. "I overheard you playing the other day and was very unimpressed."

Adrien sighed. "I'm sorry. I'll be sure to practice more."

"And you'd best brush up on your Chinese, as well," said Gabriel. "Yesterday I heard you make three grammatical errors while you were practicing with Nathalie."

This time Adrien didn't dignify him with a response. He just muttered and went back to eating, wondering if the only reason Gabriel opted to join him that evening was to criticize him. He had intended to ask permission to go to an outdoor music party that Nino was DJing that night, but at that point, he suspected that his answer would be no.

Even so, he decided that it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"There's something I wanted to ask you," he said. "There's going to be a music party tonight at the Champ de Mars. A lot of my friends will be there. May I go?"

"Out of the question," said Gabriel. "In fact, if you continue to slack off, I may have to pull you from school again."

Adrien nearly choked on his steak, unprepared to hear such a bombshell. This wasn't the first time his father threatened to pull him out of school, but he _had_ followed through on that threat at least once, and Adrien wouldn't put it past him to do it again.

After he regained his composure and swallowed he responded thusly:

"Father, _please_. I'll make more time for practicing, I promise. You don't have to do this."

"We'll see," said Gabriel. "But if your peers are distracting you, I will have no choice but to cut them out of your life."

Adrian scowled, his indignation overtaking his timidity. "Marinette, Nino and Alya are not _distractions_ , father. They're my friends. The time I've spent with them has made me happier than I've ever felt before. Don't you want me to be happy?"

His appeal to emotion, sadly - but not unexpectedly - fell on deaf ears.

"I _want_ you to reach your full potential," said Gabriel. "And these 'friends' of yours are keeping you from that. Plain and simple."

The last three words sent shockwaves of anguish radiating through Adrien's body. "Plain and simple", as he had come to learn, was Gabriel's way of saying, "This conversation is over and there's nothing you can do about it." On this particular evening, however, Adrien wasn't ready to admit defeat just yet. He made another emotional appeal - this one far more audacious.

"I bet _Mom_ wouldn't keep threatening to pull me out of school if she were still around!" he snapped.

Gabriel balked at this, his expression of shock so palpable that Adrien could see it clearly from the other side of the massive table. But any satisfaction he felt from provoking a response was squelched a moment later, when Gabriel rose to his full, towering height, leaned forward, and banged his fists on the table.

**"Be grateful that she's not, so she'll never have to see what a DISAPPOINTMENT you've become!"**

Adrien clasped a hand over his mouth to muffle his frightened gasp; he had expected a strong response from his father, but this was beyond anything he could have even imagined. For the next sixty seconds, he was frozen in a state of catatonic shock, as time itself seemed to stand still. He stared at his enraged father, waiting for him to take back what he said, or at least sit back down. As the seconds ticked by without any sign of a retraction, tears began to blur his vision.

Before Gabriel could say another word, Adrien stood up from the table with his meal still unfinished and scurried out of the room, stumbling about due to his impaired vision. He didn't stop until he got upstairs to his room - at which point he collapsed onto his bed and let his tears flow freely. His bed, as supple and luxurious as it was, offered him little to no comfort in this moment.

After a spell, he felt a tiny paw stroking his head.

"What's the matter, Adrien?" asked Plagg.

"It's my father," he sobbed. "The one time he shows up for dinner, he just uses his time to berate me. I feel like I'll never be good enough for him."

Plagg sighed. "Humans can be so judgmental and critical. But you know what _never_ judges or criticizes you? Camembert. That's why I love it so much!"

Adrien couldn't help but chuckle. Plagg wasn't the most empathetic kwami, but his words, at least, provided a momentary distraction from the stinging words Adrien heard a moment ago.

"Thanks, Plagg," Adrien said weakly. "But... I'm not really hungry right now."

For the next thirty minutes or so, he lied facedown on his bed, his pillow muffling his sobs, while Plagg stayed by his side and stroked his hair. After finally getting it all out of his system, he got up and went to the bathroom to wash his face. On the way there, however, he heard some commotion coming from outside his window. Curious, he went to investigate. As he drew closer and closer, he heard the following words amid a chorus of squawks:

"From this day forward, Paris will belong to the pigeons! Roo! ROO!"

Adrien groaned. _Seriously? Mr. Pigeon AGAIN?_

The boy was looking forward to spending the rest of the night sulking and brooding in his room, waiting for an apology from hie father that would likely never come. Unfortunately, duty called - and as the bearer of the Cat Miraculous, he couldn't just choose not to answer.

"Plagg, claws out," he muttered, mirthlessly assuming his superhero identity. Once his transformation was complete, he leaped out the window and strode across the city in search of the akuma.

* * *

Cat Noir's search lead him to the Champ de Mars - the site of the aforementioned music party, whose denizens were all running in fear of a flock of pigeons who had taken the form of a giant mecha. Ladybug, as expected, had already shown up.

"You're just in time, Cat!" she said. "Mr. Pigeon's not playing around this ti...um, Cat? What are you doing?"

Cat Noir had been looking around the premises for a sign of his friend Nino; he had hoped that the sight of his closest friend would at least help him get his mind off of his father's words. Alas, it seemed as though Nino had already fled the premises before he arrived.

"Cat?"

The boy snapped his eyes back towards Ladybug. "N-nothing," he said. "It was nothing. Let's just get this over with."

Ladybug gave him a worried look. She was just as tired of fighting Mr. Pigeon as he was, but she couldn't remember the last time he started off a battle by saying, "Let's just get this over with". It was always, "Let's kick their butt!" or, "Game on!" or some groan-worthy pun.

To her concern, he maintained his dour disposition throughout the fight. He sparred with the pigeon mecha with his teeth clenched and his brow furrowed, rarely making a sound aside from the occasional grunt. Throughout the whole affair, Gabriel's words continued to needle at his psyche. At one point, after the mecha knocked him away with a mighty blow, he pounded his fists on the floor in frustration before rising to his feet.

After charging at the mecha again, a well-aimed strike from his baton knocked Mr. Pigeon straight out of the mecha and onto the ground. Whatever satisfaction he felt in that moment was erased, however, when the pigeons flocked around his body and reformed the mecha in an instant.

"Oh, come on!" cried Cat. "What kind of _merde_ is that?!"

Ladybug had to muffle a gasp. That might have been the first time she heard Cat Noir swear, and it was definitely the first time she heard him swear in anger. Hoping to quell the tension, she decided that now would be as good a time as ever to wrap up the fight.

" _Lucky Charm!_ "

Her power produced two pairs of earplugs. After staring at them in confusion for a moment, a quick glance around the premises pointed her towards Nino's now-vacant DJ setup.

"I got it! Cat Noir, put these in!" she said, putting the first pair into her ears and tossing him the second.

Cat Noir shrugged and followed her direction, while she rushed over to the station, put a record on and cranked the volume up all the way. To Mr. Pigeon's horror, his pigeons all scattered and flew away to escape the noise, leaving him powerless. Cat took the opportunity to rush over, grab his whistle, throw it on the ground and stomp on it - far more times than necessary. Ladybug promptly captured and de-evilized the akuma, undoing the damage wrought by Mr. Pigeon and turning him back into Mr. Ramier.

"T-thank you, Ladybug and Cat Noir," Mr. Ramier said, before sheepishly skittering away.

Ladybug just smiled and held her fist out towards Cat Noir for a bump. Cat, to her concern, did not oblige her.

"Good work, Ladybug," he muttered, waving her off. Her smile disappeared as she saw him slink away with his head bowed.

"Cat Noir, what's wrong?" she asked, walking after him. "Why such a sourpuss?"

Cat Noir sighed and turned back to her; even at his lowest moment, he was unable to resist the call of his lady. He felt a twinge of guilt as he saw her knitted brow and protruding bottom lip.

"Ladybug," he said, "do you think I'm a disappointment?"

She gasped, balking at the audacity of such a question. "What?! No! You're a wonderful friend and a valuable ally. Who said you were a disappointment?"

"My fa..." Cat began, before stopping himself at the last second. He knew that any detail about his personal life, no matter how slight, could lead to Ladybug figuring out his secret identity, and he couldn't afford to take that risk.

"...I wish I could tell you," he said. "But it's okay. You don't have to worry about me."

"Oh, Cat..."

Cat Noir's heart began to melt as he stared into her pain-stricken eyes. Those glistening blue orbs of hers, which shone even through the darkness of the evening, never seemed to get any less beautiful no matter how often he saw them.

"We're a team, Cat. As superheroes, we committed ourselves to help not just the city of Paris, but also each other. I don't want to leave you like this."

She then took a seat on a nearby bench and patted the space next to her, inviting him to join her. Cat, not one to turn down an opportunity to be close to Ladybug, obliged. For a while, the two of them just sat in silence - Cat Noir with his head down and his hands folded in his lap, and Ladybug patiently waiting for him to say a word. She would have been happy to sit with him all night - if not for the fact that her Miraculous was putting her under a time constraint. If she wanted to help him, she had to take action before she transformed back; and Ladybug, as she was wont to do, came up with just the right solution.

While he was marinating in his own sadness, Cat Noir was suddenly surprised by the sensation of Ladybug's soft, dainty fingertips rubbing against his scalp.

"Would some head scritches make you feel better?"

He couldn't help but smile in response to her touch. Emboldened, she continued, even getting in a few scratches behind his ears. His smile broadened, and, much to her amusement, he began to purr. He swayed back and forth for a bit before toppling over, planting his head right in the center of Ladybug's lap. She grinned and scratched him some more, while using her other hand to stroke his back.

Her gentle touch seemed to transport him to another world - one in which he wasn't a lonely teenage boy who could never make his father proud, but a good little kitten who deserved all the love and affection his owner could offer.

"Who's my sweet little kitty cat?" she cooed.

"Mmm... I am..." he mumbled, in a lovestruck daze. In just a couple minutes, his lady managed to melt away all of his troubles and insecurities, as if they were never there to begin with.

But the moment only went on for so long before Ladybug remembered her time limit. She wriggled out from under him and scooped him up into her arms, and his heart skipped a beat as he felt her heft his weight without any sign of strain.

"Come on, let's find you a safe place to transform back."

As she dashed through the city with him in tow, he grinned and purred at the sensation of the cool wind against his face, not to mention the feeling of weightlessness as her powerful arms cradled him like a mother holding her son. It was yet another moment that he wished could go on forever - though he knew in the back of his mind that it couldn't.

Ladybug managed to find an empty alleyway to drop him off at, just as her earrings started to beep. Seconds afterward, a similar sound began emanating from Cat's ring.

"Good night, Cat," she said, bidding him goodbye with a pat on the had. "Hope I was able to help."

"More than you'll ever know," he muttered, as he watched her disappear out of sight with a dreamy smile on his face. As soon as she was gone, he let himself fall backwards onto the ground below, sighing with contentment. If there was one thing he took away from that evening, it was the fact that, even at his lowest, he could always count on his lady to be his pillar of support.

"Plagg... claws in."


End file.
